Christian
de Quincey claims that the Big Bang is a myth - is he wrong?

Alec
MacAndrew

The
CMB anisotropy in false colour

Introduction

Well informed, well argued,
detailed challenges to standard scientific models such as neo-Darwinism or the
Big Bang hypothesis abound. We should welcome them, because new
findings are often stimulated by such challenges. But there is another
class of challenge to mainstream scientific ideas that is
primarily motivated by religious, political or ideological opinions.
Such criticisms are often ill-informed, poorly presented and lacking
in merit. We expect these challenges, which are chiefly directed at modern cosmology, evolution
theory and geology, to emanate from fundamentalist creationists, and from
their fellow travelers in camouflage, the proponents of Intelligent
Design. We do not expect high standards of scholarship from these
sources. But it is surprising to encounter poorly researched, ill informed challenges from those who claim to
be members of the academic community.

Christian de Quincey is on the academic staff of the John F
Kennedy University, California, where he teaches philosophy and consciousness studies.
Dr de Quincey manages a personal website
(1) .
De Quincey has published a number of essays on his website, one of
which is titled 'Deep Spirit: Big Bang: A Modern Myth?'
(2)

In this essay, he claims that the Big Bang is a modern myth. He takes a
firm position against the standard cosmological model, characterising
it as myth and dogma. His stated intention in the essay is to
'challenge that dogma'. The essay contains a peculiar mixture of
rapt scene setting, unremarkable history, unjustified and
inaccurate analogies between modern scientists and shamans, and a
poorly researched and presented set of challenges to the Big Bang
theory. His bias against modern science, particularly science
that has a reductionist flavour, is plain.

De
Quincey expresses this opinion: 'The Big Bang is under suspicion, there is evidence of illegitimacy, and the case
should be brought to trial for open, public scrutiny'Just
what
is de Quincey advocating? It seems to me that he is suggesting a kangaroo court to
determine whether the Big Bang is supported by the scientific evidence. Who
is this public that he suggests should scrutinise the Big Bang hypothesis? The value and legitimacy of the Big Bang hypothesis is properly
tried
by the self-correcting processes of the scientific community every time new
data comes to light (83), and that is the way it should be. Suppose the lay public
were to engage in what would inevitably be a poorly informed debate on the legitimacy
of the Big Bang hypothesis, and suppose that the overwhelming majority concluded
that the observable universe did not begin in a Big Bang-like phenomenon, what
then? This unlikely scenario would have no influence on the thinking of professional
scientists (nor should it), nor would it influence by one iota the correctness
of the hypothesis. Truth in science is not determined democratically: we can
no more change the speed of light by poll, than we can determine that the Big
Bang did not happen by voting or by popular dissent.

Why am I taking time to
respond to this essay? If a high school student or an undergraduate had written
it, I would not have given it a second glance. But it is written by an
academic, who is presumably offering it as a serious contribution to the
debates about cosmology and the role modern science should play in society.
I believe that the essay fails rather badly to make a telling case, and
I explain why below. It has also provided me with an opportunity to set out some
of the recent evidence for the modern concordance model of cosmology, a
subject which is developing rapidly with new exciting data and thinking emerging
almost daily.

It assumes a sociological role for science
that neither scientist nor serious philosopher of science could
possibly agree with.

The de Quincey essay is
technically flawed and ill-researched

It appears
to be based on his reading of just
two books

De Quincey seems
to have based his
essay challenging the 'dogma' of the standard cosmological model on his
reading of just two books. Certainly, he refers to no primary source other
than these and seems to be unaware of huge swathes of cosmological research.
The books he relies on are Ramon Mendoza's 'The Acentric
Labyrinth: Giordano Bruno's Prelude to Contemporary Cosmology' (3) and Eric J
Lerner's 'The Big Bang Never Happened' (4). Let us look at them in a little more detail.

Mendoza tells the story of
the philosopher, Giordano Bruno, burned as a heretic by the Inquisition for his cosmology. Bruno proposed an
infinite cosmos, a non-fixed planet Earth and the possibility of life elsewhere
in the universe. Mendoza tells the story of Bruno's martyrdom
for daring to think outside the existing religious paradigm. Bruno, even more
than Galileo, suffered for his views, and their stories should inspire us to
defend scientific thinking and reason against ideological and religious dogma.
Nevertheless, Bruno's belief that the universe is infinite in extent and
scope offers little support to de
Quincey's own preference for that model. Bruno's belief in such a
cosmology was not supported by direct evidence (or even by the modern
scientific method) and was held by Bruno much more in the nature of a faith
position than as a scientific
hypothesis - Bruno was not a scientist but a philosopher. As such, his
views on the cosmology are entirely irrelevant to modern scientific thinking
except as an historical footnote. There is nothing more to say about Bruno,
since Bruno's beliefs have no direct contribution to make to the modern
scientific debate on cosmological origins.

Eric
Lerner's book wears its
heart on its sleeve. Its purpose is evident in its title. It sets out to
prove that the Big Bang never happened. As far as I can see, de
Quincey bases most of his arguments that call the Big Bang into question
on Lerner's book. It was originally published in 1991 and so is
rather out-of-date, given the rapid developments in cosmology since then, but, worse, it takes a strong and ultimately
unjustifiable stance against the standard model, which I will expose in some
detail below. I am surprised that an academic should base his entire
research for an essay on the reading of a single quirky book.

Lerner's
claimed
problems for Big Bang are not problems at all

De Quincey
relies for the most part on the errors
that Lerner in ‘The Big Bang Never Happened’ promulgated. He
seems to be unaware of the findings of the COBE satellite, never mind the more recent
measurements from WMAP satellite, and the BOOMERANG and MAXIMA balloon experiments which provide convincing evidence in favour of the
standard model (5) - (12), (26), (27)

To
be fair, WMAP data post-dates his essay, so it is unreasonable to expect him
to acknowledge it. However the COBE data pre-dates
the essay by several years, so the fact that he does not seem to be aware of it
and certainly does not acknowledge it, is remarkable in someone who has chosen
to
comment on cosmological hypotheses.

In
fact, de Quincey
summarily dismissed WMAP data as follows, in an e-mail to me, also posted on his web-site,
after I had brought it to his attention:'I do not dispute the data you cite -- in fact,
from what I know they are accurate. But your conclusion that the big bang is
"not a myth" doesn't follow from the data. Other cosmological models
can provide alternative explanations for the data you cite, without invoking
the idea that it "all" started in a big bang' (13). But the data in references (5) - (12) strongly
support the Big Bang
cosmology and provide little support for the alternative models (for example,
alternatives such as
the plasma cosmology, or Hoyle, Bondi and Gold's steady state generation
hypothesis). In fact his statement above reveals little understanding
of the implications of the microwave background anisotropy.

The Cosmic Microwave Background is the most
perfect blackbody spectrum ever measured. The temperature of the
CMB is uniform to better than one part in 10,000- the tiny non-uniformity in the
CMB is known as the CMB anisotropy. The properties of the
CMB anisotropy tells us a huge amount about the universe. Read on.

Let us look at the supposed
problems
that Lerner cites as evidence that Big Bang cosmology is flawed.
De Quincey, in his essay, after listing these 'problems', concludes: 'Faced with the test of
scientific observation - not just ivory tower speculation - the Big Bang
theory fails'. He
relies on Lerner here, and since Lerner was wrong, then so is he.

1. The Universe is Homogeneous

This
problem is known as the Horizon Problem. The universe is
homogeneous in all directions. Given that the universe is so big that information
could not flow across it in the time since the Big Bang, and therefore
information cannot be exchanged between widely separated regions, why is it homogeneous? De
Quincey characterises the problem as follows:

'Observation
shows that the 3°K background radiation is uniform in all directions. Yet,
according to the theory, the background radiation formed when the universe was
only 300,000 years old. Since light is the fastest mode of communication, any
parts of the universe separated by more than 300,000 light-years would not have
had sufficient time to influence each other to equalize their temperatures. Yet
there are regions of the universe separated by hundreds of millions of
light-years.'

This is actually an
inaccurate characterisation of the problem. In particular, the statement
that parts of the universe separated by more than 300,000 light years lie
outside the region of communication (known as the Hubble horizon) completely ignores the fact that the CMB
was formed at z (redshift) ~1000 and that therefore the comoving Hubble horizon would
be 300 million light years across today (WMAP measures, more
accurately, decoupling at 379,000 years after Big Bang, at z = 1089 (10)).
However, since the universe is at least 10's of billion of light years
across, the Horizon Problem is real.

z is the redshift
of light arriving from a distant source. The CMB has a blackbody
temperature of 2.75°K and a redshift of 1089. Space has expanded
by a factor of z+1 since the light was emitted from an object
at redshift, z.

Actually,
de Quincey cannot make up his mind whether the Horizon Problem is a problem
for the Big Bang hypothesis or not. He writes:

' I’m not convinced that this is a really serious
threat to Big Bang theory. It strikes me that the assumption of spontaneous
thermodynamic gradients appearing randomly over time, while perhaps true on
quantum or microscopic scales, is unlikely to hold for macroscopic dimensions.
I think that entropic annihilation or evening out of thermodynamic gradients
over time is far more likely. Thus, if the initial “flare up” of radiation at
the 300,000 year mark of cosmic evolution (when free electrons were captured by
atomic formations making matter transparent to primordial radiation for the
first time), if this radiation began homogeneously, then what reason do we have
for not believing it would continue to be so?'

But then he also writes:' Given the enormous
explosive reactions between the primordial particles constantly happening
throughout the nascent universe form its first moment to its 300,000 year anniversary,
it seems too much to expect homogeneity across 300,000 light-years. So perhaps,
after all, Thuan’s “problem” remains a difficulty for Big Bang theory?'

(The observed CMB anisotropy - the tiny fluctuations in
temperature in the CMB - is almost scale invariant and this is in agreement
with the models of the origin of the CMB anisotropy in quantum fluctuations
in the scalar field during inflation - in direct contradiction to de Quincey's statement
above preferring microscopic fluctuations over larger scale ones).

The fact
is that homogeneity
was a real problem for Big Bang and one that has been resolved.
In the first statement above de Quincey fails to acknowledge that information
exchange is essential for homogeneity and that information exchange between
widely separated regions of our universe cannot happen in the time available
since the Big Bang. (He says:' I think that entropic annihilation or evening
out of thermodynamic gradients over time is far more likely' - entirely
missing the point that
evening out of thermodynamic gradients - or any other physical process - cannot occur at
faster than the speed of light.) In his second (Thuan) quote he seems unaware
that the Horizon Problem (and the Flatness Problem) has been resolved by
the concept of
inflation (14) (15) (16) and that the signature of inflation is seen in
the data of COBE and WMAP quoted above (17). Inflation is a very rapid expansion
of space by a factor of 1028 that allows the entire observable
universe to have been in causal contact before inflation. The main evidence for inflation
is in the homogeneity of the CMB and in the flatness of the geometry of
the universe, neither of which can be adequately explained without an inflationary
epoch. There is evidence that the
slight running of the spectral index (the deviation from scale invariance of the temperature
fluctuation distribution in the CMB) supports an inflationary model (18).
Furthermore, inflation has great credence because it is consistent
with Grand Unified Theories that integrate quantum scale phenomena with
cosmological scale phenomena. It predicts Gaussian, adiabatic, and almost
scale invariant fluctuations just as observed. These fluctuations are a
necessary consequence of quantum fluctuations in the scalar field during the
period of rapid expansion.

Gaussian fluctuations are random. The probability
of finding a particular temperature at a point in the CMB follows
a Gaussian random distribution

Adiabatic fluctuations have no fluctuation
in entropy and the fluctuations in radiation and matter are in phase
- the alternative situation is called isocurvature and has entropy
fluctuations and the matter and radiation fluctuations are in antiphase
and cancel one another out. Isocurvature starting conditions
are not supported by the observed CMB fluctuations

Scale invariant fluctuations are those where
the fluctuations occur at all scales - they are fractal

So much for problem #1.

2. The Universe
has Large-Scale Structure

De Quincey sets great
store by this 'problem', following Lerner closely. He stresses this one argument in his
email to me posted on his
website defending his essay:'For example, modern cosmology has revealed
massive structures in the cosmos, far bigger than galactic clusters -- for
example, something called "The Great Wall." Mathematical calculations
show that given what we know about the force of gravity, and relativity theory,
it would have taken somewhere between 80 -100 billion years for structures of
such magnitude to have coalesced!'(13). He, of course, fails to provide
good references to those
calculations that demand a period of 80 - 100 billion
years for very large structures, over 300 Mpc in size, to develop. I wonder why that is?

He bases his thoughts here
entirely on Lerner and repeats Lerner's argument as follows:

'The problem is this:
Given the known mass density of the universe, and the force of gravity, 20
billion years is just not enough time for such immensely large objects to form.
From observations of red-shifts, as well as from other methods of measurement,
“Galaxies almost never move much faster than a thousand kilometers per second,
about one-three-hundredth as fast as the speed of light” (Lerner, p. 23). Since
the Big Bang, therefore, (at most 20 billion years ago) galaxies could have
moved only about 65 million light-years.
However, in 1986 Brent Tully, an astronomer from the University of Hawaii,
discovered that “almost all the galaxies within a distance of a billion
light-years of earth are concentrated into huge ribbons of matter about a
billion light-years long, three hundred million light-years wide, and one
hundred million light-years thick” (Lerner, 1991, p. 15).

These are big objects by any reckoning, dwarfing the 65 million light-years
maximum imposed by the Big Bang theory. In order for Tully’s supercluster
complexes to form, matter must have moved at least 270 million light-years.
That would take between 80-100 billion years (conservatively).

“There is no energetic process vigorous enough either to create, in twenty
billion years, the large-scale structures astronomers have observed or to stop
their headlong motions once they were created” (Lerner, 1991, p. 31).'

Lerner's first mistake is
to ignore the fact of expansion. Re-ionisation occurred and the first stars
formed at z = 20 and at 180 Myr after Big Bang (10). At that time
everything was 20 times closer together, so conglomerations of matter would
have to move 20 times less far to achieve the same clustering. In fact,
as we will see below, the fluctuations that would seed the structure were
already present with the predicted fluctuation power spectrum at z=1000,
when the structure that would have seeded the Great Wall would have had
linear dimensions of 1/1000th its current dimensions. Lerner's fallacy is based on his attempting to create the observed
structures in the current scale of spacetime starting from homogeneity. That is a fundamental error of perception.
In fact the seeds for the structures were already present at z=1000.

Lerner ignores the fact that large scale structure is
explained by the observed anisotropy in the CMB. It has been known since
1980, after Peebles carried out seminal calculations, that a 6µK quadrupole RMS anisotropy in the CMB is sufficient to explain the
large scale structure for a Hubble constant of H0 = 100km
s-1Mpc-1,
and if H0 = 50km
s-1Mpc-1 then 12 µK will do it (19) (20). The
Hubble constant is determined by data from WMAP to be 72+/-5km
s-1Mpc-1
so a quadrupole anisotropy on the scale
of 10µK is sufficient. This is detected by WMAP and confirms earlier
measurements. The amplitude at the first acoustic peak occurs at multipole
l = 220 and has an amplitude of 74.7µK. The quadrupole RMS amplitude
as measured by WMAP is 8 ± 2µK (21). This is consistent
with Peebles calculations.

The anisotropy in the CMB can be described by spherical harmonic
multipoles derived from Fourier decomposition:

where represents the scale of multipole moments.

The RMS angular temperature fluctuation for a given angular scale
is then:

where is the angle subtended by that scale on the surface of last scattering and
is the variance of the multipole components at multipole in the angular power spectrum.

The
CMB power spectrum. Angular scale and multipole scales are
both shown. The TT spectrum is the power spectrum of temperature
and the TE spectrum is the temperature polarisation cross power.
The first acoustic peak in the temperature spectrum occurs
at l=220 and 0.6°. After ref 31.

The Hubble constant is determined by how
fast the universe is expanding. Hubble determined that the
further away a galaxy is the faster it would be receding from us.
The Hubble constant, H0, tells
us how much in kilometers per second per megaparsec. So a galaxy
at a distance of 2Mpc will be receding at 200 km s-1 for
H0 =
100 km s-1
Mpc-1

In fact
the lack of power in the angular spectrum at very large scales, first seen in
COBE and confirmed in WMAP, (certainly at the
quadrupole, l = 2, and to some extent at the octopole) has been
remarked on by a number of observers (22). However for multipole
l › 4, agreement with the standard model is remarkable. (The Integrated
Sachs-Wolfe effect predicts enhanced power at low values of the multipole and
WMAP and COBE data trend in the opposite sense, but otherwise the power spectrum
of fluctuations in the CMB absolutely supports an adiabatic, scale invariant
or fractal structure). (Recently an explanation for the unexpected lack of power
at large scales has been proposed (85) - go
here for more information). Structures such as the Great Wall occur on a scale of
~ 250 h-1Mpc (where
h is Hubble's constant measured in 100km s-1Mpc-1).
Such a scale would subtend of the order of 2° in the CMB and that is equivalent
to l ~ 80. At this angular scale the amplitude of the fluctuations in
the CMB is
about 50µK according to the WMAP measurements. So there is more
than enough power in the temperature fluctuations to seed the large scale structure
that we see, including up to and beyond structures of the size of the Great
Wall (23) - indeed structures larger than the Great Wall can be explained
by the fluctuations in the CMB since the CMB is essentially scale invariant,
at least out to very large scales. There is some evidence that as the
scale increases the structure eventually becomes homogeneous and non fractal.
Wu et al present data in a review article from a number of sources (CMB,
galaxy surveys, radio galaxies, X-ray background - XRB, Quasars and high-z galaxies
and the Lyman-alpha forest) that indicate that the fractal dimension D2
approaches a value of 3 (indicating homogeneity) for scales above 100
h-1Mpc (25) throughout
the universe from z=0 to z=3.

Miller et al compared the
power spectrum of the CMB fluctuations with the fluctuations in matter density
observed today (24). The CMB data was derived from the BOOMERANG (26) and MAXIMA
(27) balloon experiments. The matter density data was derived from the Abell/ACO
Cluster Survey, the IRAS Point Source Redshift catalogue and the Automated Plate
Measuring Machine cluster catalogue. The data from these surveys goes out to z = 0.1 and
traces scales up to gigaparsecs (larger than the Great Wall). The correlation
between CMB and the matter density in the universe fits the data so well that Miller et al can accurately predict the CMB structure
(originating at z=1000) using the matter density data (at z=0.1) and a
value for Ωvacuum = 0.8derived from supernova SN1a
data at z=1 using the concordance or standard cosmological model.

In October 2003, Max Tegmark and colleagues analysed a survey of 200,000
galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (86), (87). They used the measured
matter density power spectrum to derive cosmological parameters. The authors
commented:

'Note
that these numbers are in substantial agreement with the results of the WMAP
team, despite a completely independent analysis and independent redshift survey
data; this is a powerful confirmation of their results and the emerging standard
model of cosmology. Equally impressive is the fact that we get similar results
and error bars when replacing WMAP by the combined pre-WMAP CMB data. In other
words, the concordance model and the tight constraints on its parameters are
no longer dependent on any one data set — everything still stands even if we
discard either WMAP or pre-WMAP CMB data and either SDSS or 2dFGRS galaxy data.
No single data set is indispensable.'

and:

'The fact
that any simple model fits such accurate and diverse measurements is impressive
evidence that the basic theoretical framework of modern cosmology is correct.'

In other words,
the fluctuations in the CMB and the clustering of galaxies both support the
same cosmological model and we can derive one from the other. Lerner and de
Quincey are wrong about this.

So much for
Big Bang being a myth.

And so much for problem
#2.

3. Chemical Composition
of the Cosmos

de Quincey now turns to
his third 'problem' which he, following Lerner, describes
as follows:

' "If we accept the idea that there is a great deal more ordinary matter than we
see, the basic predictions of the Big Bang as to how much helium, lithium and
deuterium are produced are wrong" '

de Quincey
then comments: 'In short, for the Big Bang theory to account for the unmistakable fact that the
universe has large-scale structure, it is forced to invent the hypothetical
“patch” of additional ordinary matter. But the observed ratios of primordial
chemical elements rules out there being any more ordinary matter.'

Well first
of all, let us be clear that there is more ordinary matter than we can
see in luminous objects: in fact we can only see about 25% of the ordinary matter
or baryons that we know exist. But both Lerner and de Quincey have got things
horribly mixed up here.

To begin with,
the baryon density in the Universe is not derived from a need to explain large
scale structure as de Quincey would have it. One wonders where he got
that notion from. There are two independent ways to determine the baryon
density in the universe.

a) The first
of these uses the ratios of abundances of particular isotopes of light
elements,
hydrogen, helium and lithium created in the nucleosynthesis stage of the
Big Bang, and the neutron mean life time. The ratio, η, of baryon number
density (ordinary matter) to the photon number density strongly determines
the era in which deuterium can fuse into heavier species before it is photonically
destroyed. This determines the era in which nucleosynthesis starts and
determines how many neutrons are left to form helium-4 and lithium. The
Burles-Tytler deuterium measurement gives (D/H)p
= (3.4 ± 0.3) × 10-5 which in turn yields a baryon to
photon ration, η = 5.1 x 10-10 (28), (29), (30). In order to determine
the current baryon density, one must convert the primordial η to primordial
baryon density by multiplying η by the photon number density at nucleosynthesis
and the mean mass per baryon and then by reducing the density by the volume
increase in the universe since Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). We have to make
the assumption of adiabacity (that the electromagnetic energy density has remained
constant within the scale factor since BBN to complete this conversion;
and adiabacity is strongly supported in WMAP data). This results
in a baryon density Ωbh2 = 0.020. This can be cross-checked
by the abundances of other light elements. For example, the abundance
of primordial He-4 increases with increasing η. (Actually Lerner gets
this completely back to front saying:'as the number of photons per nucleus increases, so does the production of helium'.
Perhaps he was thinking of deuterium!)

b) The second approach to
determining baryon density relies on the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations
in the CMB. The state of matter-energy at the surface of last scattering
was a baryon-photon plasma that behaved as a fluid. Gravity driven acoustic
oscillations were present in this fluid and the greatest amplitude of fluctuation that we
observe was where the frequency corresponds exactly to a single
compression between Big Bang and the surface of last scattering. This
results in the first (and major) peak in the CMB temperature power spectrum,
at multipole l = 220, which corresponds to an acoustic horizon scale of 300 ±
3, a comoving acoustic horizon size
of 143 ± 4 Mpc and characteristic angular scale of fluctuations of θA
= 0.601 ± 0.005° (31) . Since the presence of baryons affects both the
spring rate and the damping of the oscillations in a precisely determined way,
by measuring the ratio of the amplitude of the first peak (maximum compression) to
the second peak (maximum compression followed by maximum rarefaction) in
the angular power spectrum of the CMB, we can determine the baryon density.
This method yields a baryon density Ωbh2 = 0.0224
± 0.0009 according to WMAP data (11).

Before decoupling,
the photons and baryons form a classical fluid. There are
pre-existing fluctuations in the primordial field caused by quantum
effects in the scalar field of inflation. Gravity acts to compress
the fluid and this compression is counteracted by pressure in the
fluid. Oscillations are therefore set up in the photon-baryon
fluid. These are acoustic oscillations and the speed of sound
in this fluid is very high at c/√3 ≈ 0.6c
where c is the speed of light.
Now, we can see that the mode with the maximum amplitude must have
a scale such that the fluid has compressed exactly once in the lifetime
of the universe up to the time of decoupling. This corresponds
to the first peak in the CMB spectrum. The second peak corresponds
to the mode where the fluid has experienced exactly one compression
and rarefaction cycle in that time. The acoustic horizon - ie the
distance sound can travel in the fluid in the time between Big Bang
and decoupling corresponds to the angular scale of the first peak.
The scale at the time of decoupling is given by the time available
multiplied by the speed of sound in the fluid. The current
or co-moving scale of the same mode is larger by the expansion of
space since decoupling, approximately 1000 times, and is 143Mpc
in diameter. In a flat universe, the angular scale is the angle
subtended by the co-moving size of the sound horizon on the surface
of last scattering. This corresponds to spherical multimode l =
220 in the spectrum or 0.6°. The predictions and results provide
excellent support for the concordance model.

Surface of Last
Scattering: The photons that we observe in the Cosmic Background
Radiation have been streaming through the cosmos since the time
of decoupling more than 13.3 billion years ago. These photons,
therefore, can be considered to arise on a spherical shell or surface
at a distance approximately 13.3 billion light-years from us. This
is the surface of last scattering. Since decoupling was not
an instantaneous event but took place over a period of time, this
shell has a finite thickness. An angular scale θ of
1° coresponds to a linear scale on the surface of last scattering
of the order of 200Mpc

That two entirely independent
measures of the same parameter, based on the same model but using entirely
different basic data (the abundance of the light elements and the ratio of the
first and second peak in the angular power spectrum of the CMB), should yield
results in such close agreement is very strong supporting evidence for the validity
of the model.

So the inferred baryon density
in the universe is not derived or deduced from large structure considerations,
contrary to de Quincey's claim.

Furthermore he makes
additional errors. He says:'the observed ratios of primordial
chemical elements rules out there being any more ordinary matter'.This
is wrong. On what basis can
he possibly claim that the ratio of primordial chemical elements rules
out the existence of non-luminous ordinary matter when in fact the ratio
of primordial chemical elements is one of the two major sources of data for
deriving the number density of baryons in the universe. In other words,
the very thing that he claims rules out the existence of three times non-luminous
ordinary matter compared with luminous ordinary matter is the one of the ways that scientists
actually use to determine the existence of non-luminous ordinary matter.

Lerner's statements
are equally wrong. He says '
"If we accept the idea that there is a great deal more ordinary matter than we
see, the basic predictions of the Big Bang as to how much helium, lithium and
deuterium are produced are wrong",
but this is not so as we have seen.

So much for
problem #3.

4.The existence of Dark
Matter

De Quincey claims that the
existence of dark matter is somehow a problem for the Big Bang theory - or rather
that the inference that dark matter exists (and that actually, we know quite
precisely how much there is) somehow turns the theory into a myth. On the contrary,
there is no problem
whatsoever with inferring a conclusion from data derived from indirect observations of the phenomenon. Let us take a very common and
familiar example: the existence of band gaps and the behaviour of electrons
in semiconductors is very well known to solid state physicists. Doped semiconductors
have free electrons or holes at energy levels in the band gap. Transistors
depend on it. Computers would not exist were it not for this, and you would
not be reading this, yet no-one has 'seen' an electron cross a band gap from
the valence to the conduction band. We
understand exactly how electrons behave in doped semiconductors by the influence
that they have on other matter and on photons that we can observe. In fact, no-one
has ever 'seen' an electron in any circumstance.

In the same way that the
existence of electrons and their behaviour is inferred from the influence that
electrons have on things that we can see and sense, the existence of dark matter
is inferred from its influence on things that we can see and sense.

Another example is the structure
of DNA: Watson and Crick inferred the double helix structure of DNA in
1953 from indirect evidence such as the X-ray diffraction pattern of the
molecule. It was the first step in understanding the structure and function
of the code of life on earth and molecular biology rests on the shoulders
of these giants ( and of Rosalind Franklin). There have been literally
tens of thousands of papers since published on these subjects. The fact that
very little that was known in 1953 about DNA and the way it works, in no
way diminishes the accuracy of Watson and Crick's observations. Similarly
the fact that we do not, as yet, know the exact composition of all of dark matter
and the way it works in no way diminishes the powerful evidence for its existence.
To pretend that it does diminish or invalidate it reveals a very basic misunderstanding about the
process and role of science in general and of astrophysics in particular. We cannot
know everything at once. We don't have to know everything
to have a high confidence in what we do know.

So let us see how we know
that dark matter exists and how much there is in the universe.

The evidence for dark matter
can be characterised as follows:

Orbital speeds and
radii of orbits of stars in spiral galaxies provide evidence for the mass
and mass distribution within galaxies The flat rotation curves determined
by Vera Rubin et al (33) (34) (35) can only be explained by mass density
in spiral galaxies at least ten times higher than the mass we can see: in
fact in the last few years, not only do we know that the mass of galaxies
is much higher than we can observe in luminous objects but that there exists
a supermassive black hole at the centre of most if not all galaxies with
masses ranging up to several million solar masses - this certainly represents
a proportion of the dark matter (36) - (40)

Velocities of galaxies
in clusters (such as the relatively local Virgo and Coma galactic clusters)
are such that the clusters would disperse in much less time than the age
of the universe. In order for these clusters to remain together, their mass
must be at least ten times the mass of the stars that we see in the clusters.
This data was first observed a very long time ago in 1937 by Fritz
Zwicky (32). De Quincey cites a paper by Byrd
and Valtonen that claims that the observed dispersion of peculiar velocities
in galaxies in clusters is less than others infer because some galaxies
are included that are not part of the cluster. But this has been superceded; hugely more detailed surveys have been
conducted and these confirm the fact that the matter density is higher than
we can see in luminous baryonic matter. Lerner cites Byrd and Valtonen who claimed that the observations of galactic
velocities in clusters, if properly interpreted, does not lead to the conclusion
of the existence of dark matter. Again, this is out-of-date, since a huge range of galaxy
surveys has since been completed and the evidence for dark matter in the
dispersion of peculiar velocities in clusters is incontrovertible (41) -
(44)

According to General
Relativity, the presence of the gravitational effects of matter distorts
spacetime locally. The consequence of this is that light passing near massive
objects is distorted and GR tells us by how much. This effect is known as
gravitational lensing. The lensing (and related effects such as cosmic shear)
is observed and also indicates that the density of matter is up to ten times
more than we can see in luminous objects. Some surveys of distant galaxies
affected by gravitational lensing are so detailed that the distribution
of dark matter over significant swathes of the sky can be determined (46),
(47), (48). See below for more detail on gravitational lensing.

Very hot X-ray emitting gas in galaxies and clusters requires considerably higher matter density
than in luminous matter to keep it bound (such gas by the way, represents
one source for ordinary baryonic dark matter - there is a vast amount of
it) (49) (50)

So, based on this evidence,
we are absolutely justified in concluding that dark matter exists. The observations
leave no room for other interpretations (hypothesised exotic phenomena such
as non-Newtonian gravitation - for example MOND - fail terminally
on other observations ). We can be quite sure that the universe contains a substantial contribution
of non-baryonic dark matter (we have seen above how the density of baryonic
or ordinary dark matter is derived) and the total density of gravitationally
acting matter according to the measures above is about five times as much as
the density of baryons. So there must be about five times as much non-baryonic
dark matter as ordinary matter.

In the period before decoupling,
non-baryonic dark matter was able to form gravitational fluctuations since,
unlike baryons, it was not coupled to photons. Ordinary matter remained
uniform until decoupling, at which point it was free to fall into the gravitational
potential wells formed by the dark matter thus creating the seeds for the
visible structure that we see today (51).

What is this non-baryonic
dark matter? Well, at the moment we don't know. There is a number of candidates
(several or all of which could well turn out to exist and some that we already
know exist) including collisionless cold dark matter - CCDM, (a subset of which is
weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs), strongly self-interacting dark matter,
warm dark matter, repulsive dark matter, self-annihilating dark matter,
supermassive black holes, primordial black holes, etc. The standard model
works well with collisionless cold dark matter at predicting the largest scale
structures in the universe including the biggest sheets of supergalaxies. However it tends to overproduce structure at
the scale of galaxies and below as well as predicting a rather sharp increase
in density in the centre of halos of dwarf galaxies that is not observed. So CCDM
does not, on its own appear to be capable of explaining the detailed observations
and so different models of dark matter are being developed. More detailed
observations of the cosmos, such as that which will become available from even
more sophisticated satellite observatories, such as Planck, will help us to distinguish
more accurately the nature of non-baryonic dark matter. For example WMAP
rules out a significant contribution from warm dark matter (11), since reionisation occurs
early
at z>10.

Since we now know of the
existence of dark energy which seems to take the form of a cosmological constant
Λ (from observations of very distant SN1a supernovae (52) (53) (54) and
from observations of the late Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in the CMB (45) ),
we are able with the sum of baryons, non-baryonic dark matter and dark energy
to obtain the critical mass-energy density required by the Big Bang model plus
inflation, which is a flat geometry universe as observed. The
density of dark energy is derived from the observed epoch at which the universe
transitioned from being matter dominated to being Λ dominated. This happened
about 2 billion years ago and we now live in a universe where the expansion is
accelerating and will continue to accelerate exponentially as the influence
of Λ, the dark energy, becomes more prominent and the matter density becomes
less with expansion. This leads us to the concordance model developed
in the last four years that is accepted as an extremely good hypothesis by the
vast majority of cosmologists and astrophysicists. Competing models cannot fit the
detailed observations with anything like the precision offered by the concordance
model. Our confidence is boosted by the fact that parameters can be derived
consistently in different ways. Also predictions, such as the age of the
Universe, using entirely different methods converge on consistent
values.

It is only
since 1997 that Riess and Perlmutter announced that their survey
of supernovae indicated accelerating expansion of the universe.
Type 1a supernovae are good standard candles, because they
explode in the same way. It is therefore straightforward
to determine how far away they are and how fast they are moving. To
everyone's surprise, they found that the expansion was slower in
the past and is accelerating now. This result has been confirmed
by observations of the way the energy of photons arising immediately
after decoupling is affected by falling into and climbing out
of the gravitational wells of galaxies, as those wells become
shallower during the time the photons are in their influence (the
late Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect). An accelerating expansion
for the universe can be explained by a dark energy or cosmological
constant, Λ, which exerts an expanding pressure on the cosmos independent
of expansion. The strong constraint of the observed flat universe
also requires this, since Ωm,
the density of matter is insufficient to result in a closed universe.
As the universe becomes more Λ-dominated, its expansion will
accelerate.

The concordance model now
consists of three elements of mass-energy with densities measured by WMAP (10)

Baryons or ordinary
matter, which contributes Ωb = 0.047 (or 4.7% of the critical mass-energy
of the universe)

Dark matter which contributes Ωm
- Ωb where Ωm is the total matter density. Ωm
= 0.27, which gives the density of dark matter 0.22 of critical density or
22% of the critical mass-energy

Dark energy which contributes
ΩΛ = 0.73 or 73% of the critical mass-energy

So much
for problem #4.

Suggested
cosmological alternatives have serious problems

I have no commitment to
the Big Bang model and if some hypothesis that better fits the evidence were
to be put forward I would be happy to acknowledge it. The fact is that
the Big Bang theory has its dominant position in the scientific community
because it fits our observations very well and because the alternatives really
do not fit, however interesting they might be.

De Quincey suggests two
models that he claims are credible alternatives to the concordance (Big Bang)
model. These are Lerner's Plasma Cosmology (based on the work of Hannes
Alfvén and others), and the Steady State
model of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold in its updated form.

Alfvén, Gold, Bondi
and Hoyle are extremely well respected scientists whose work we should take
seriously. They are not cranks. It might well be that some of the ideas
they have generated will contribute to our understanding of the history of our
cosmos. That would not make the Big Bang a modern 'myth' any more than these
hypotheses are myths. However, what is clear is that things are not looking
good for them, which is why the Big Bang in its concordance form remains the
dominant hypothesis.

1. Generic problems with
infinite age infinite extent models

Let's start by pointing
out that there is a serious problem with any hypothesis that postulates a static
universe of infinite age and of infinite dimensions. The entire sky in
a such a universe would appear as bright as the surface of the sun appears to us
since there would be an infinite number of observable stars covering the entire
sky. This is known as Olbers' paradox and was formulated
by Heinrich Olbers in 1823. But we know that the night sky is dark. Olbers'
paradox is, of course, no longer a paradox, having been resolved by the knowledge
that the universe has a finite age (putting a strict finite limit on the
volume of the universe and the number of stars that we can observe) and by the
expansion of space time which stretches out and reduces the energy of light
waves from distant sources in proportion to their distance, and which puts a
finite limit to the observable extent of the universe. Nevertheless, Olbers'
paradox remains an insurmountable problem for steady state hypotheses.

2. Problems with Lerner's plasma
universe

Lerner bases his plasma theory on work previously conducted by Alfvén,
Peratt and others. The basic hypothesis is described accurately and simply in
de Quincey's essay as follows:'Many billions of years ago the small corner of the infinite universe that we can
observe started to contract, under the influence of its own gravity. When it was
about a tenth its present size, matter and antimatter started to mix,
annihilating each other and generating huge quantities of energetic electrons
and positrons. Trapped in magnetic fields, these particles drove the plasma
apart over hundreds of millions of years. The explosions were small enough not
to disrupt previously formed filaments of plasma, so these far more ancient
objects still exist today, in expanded form—just as designs printed on a balloon
persist while it is inflated. . . . But this was in no way a Big Bang that
created matter, space, and time. It was just a big bang, an explosion in one par[sic]of the universe (Lerner, 1991, p. 52)'

What's wrong
with this? Well, it simply doesn't work. As Ned Wright, Professor of Astronomy
at UCLA, and science editor of the Astrophysical Journal points out (55): 'What causes the reversal from collapse to re-expansion? Lerner claims that it
is the pressure caused by the annihilation of matter and antimatter during the
collapse....But only pressure
differences cause forces. A pressure gradient is needed to generate an
acceleration. In the case of a large region of collapse, which is needed to
match the observations, a larger acceleration requires a larger pressure
gradient, and this gradient exists over a larger distance, leadingto a greatly
increased pressure.

But in relativity pressure has "weight" and causes stronger gravitational
attraction. This can be seen using work W = PdV, so the pressure is similar to
an energy density. Then through E = mc2, this energy density is
similar to a mass density. If the collapsing region is big enough to match the
observations, then the pressure must be so large that a black hole forms and the
region does not re-expand. Peebles discusses this problem with the plasma
cosmology in his book "Principles of Physical Cosmology" '. (56)

So Lerner's cosmology cannot explain the observed Hubble redshift.

Here are some
other problems with Lerner'splasma
cosmology:

a) It does
not explain the cosmic microwave background.

Lerner claims
that the CMB arises from the supernovae of massive stars. But the CMB is
the most perfect black body spectrum ever measured and its temperature is
isotropic to one part in 10,000. Although the thickness of the decoupling
surface is finite (so that photons in the CMB became free to stream across the
universe at different times and therefore at different temperatures), the red-shift
at the specific time of decoupling exactly compensates for this so that the
CMB appears to arise from a body at a single temperature. If the CMB originated in supernovae, as
Lerner claims,
we should expect to see much greater anisotropy and a much poorer fit to the
black body spectrum. Supernovae are not isothermal and so cannot produce
a black body spectrum. Lerner claims that the isotropy and the black body spectrum
of the CMB can be explained by absorption of the primary radiation by interstellar
dust and re-emission. But there is absolutely no evidence for this
absorbing curtain. Observations of the intensity of extended radio sources
as a function of distance fail to produce any evidence for the existence of
the absorbing material.

Furthermore
the final data from the FIRAS (Far-Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer) instrument
on board COBE (56) (57) show that Lerner's attempt to create a model for the
deviations from black body simply fail to match the data.

And it certainly
cannot explain the power spectrum of the anisotropy, with the first peak at
l=220, which supports the model that predicted it several years prior to it
being measured.

b) It does
not explain the abundance of light elements

Lerner's idea
is that helium is made in the same massive stars that eventually go supernova
(and create the CMB in his model). The 24% observed abundance of helium can be explained
this way, except that stars that make helium also make metals in amounts that are simply not
observed in old stars. What is even more damning is that stars do not make
deuterium and lithium (see (58), for example:
'We conclude that the observed Galactic Centre deuterium is cosmological, with an
abundance reduced by stellar processing and mixing, and that there is no
significant Galactic source of deuterium'.)
All lithium however does not originate in the Big Bang, some being made
in the intergalactic space in the current epoch, making it a poorer
measure for determining the density of baryons (59).

c) A credible
model that predicts significant effects of electromagnetism at cosmic scales
is lacking

Simply put,
gravity is the only force which has sufficient influence over sufficiently long
scales (up to 300 MPc) to influence the formation and maintenance of superclusters.

3. Problems
with the Steady State model

A major problem
with the steady state model is that there are fewer weak radio sources per unit volume
near to us compared with far away. This contradicts the Steady State
model (60)

A second major
problem is the existence of quasars. Quasars are only seen at great distances
(and thus greatly distant times). They are never local and so the universe
is not uniform but very different in the past and this also contradicts the Steady
State theory.

But the death
knell for the Steady
State theory was the discovery of the CMB by Penzias and
Wilson, which cannot be explained by the Steady
State hypothesis. The universe is
currently neither isothermal nor opaque so it cannot produce the perfect black
body of the CMB. Finally in measuring the temperature of the CMB in the
past, by looking at the absorption spectra of quasars by neutral carbon
atoms close by and at z up to 3 (84), we find that the CMB temperature (currently
2.7°K) increases in the past, so that at z=3 the temperature of the CMB
was about 10°K as predicted by the Big Bang model (TCMB=T0(1+z)
) The Steady
State model cannot explain the CMB, but if it could, the
temperature of the CMB would be constant at 2.7°K and would not increase
with increasing z as observed. These observations completely reject the
Steady
State hypothesis.

These are
the reasons it was abandoned. They are good scientific reasons and there is
no irrational attachment to Big Bang here. Unfortunately for de Quincey's
thesis, the Steady
State just doesn't stand up to the evidence.

4. Problems with the Quasi-steady state theory

The Quasi-steady State hypothesis (QSSC) is an attempt by Hoyle, Burbridge
and Narlikar to explain the change in the CMB temperature and the excess of
old radio sources. The hypothesis postulates a pulsing universe which
is superimposed
on an exponential change in the scale factor (not very steady state is it?) .
Unfortunately for the hypothesis it predicts blue-shifted faint radio sources.
Noblue shifted faint radio sources have ever been observed
- they just don't exist.

Furthermore the QSSC predicts a universe with decelerating expansion but as we now
know the expansion of the universe is accelerating (52) (54).

And as was the case with the
plasma universe and the Steady State model, the CMB itself and the structure
of the anisotropy cannot be explained.

So, like the plasma universe hypothesis, the Steady
State hypothesis in all it manifestations
simply fails to fit the evidence. That is why it (and the plasma universe) are
rejected by the scientific community. This is in direct contradiction
de Quincey's claim that the Big Bang hypothesis is preferred dogmatically. In
fact, it is preferred because it fits the evidence and the alternatives he presents
simply do not.

The de Quincey essay contains logical fallacies

The de Quincey essay contains logical fallacies and other
errors

As de Quincey develops his overall thesis, he puts
forward arguments which are logically fallacious.His overall thrust or argument is fallacious,
as are many of the supporting arguments that he makes throughout the essay.It is not difficult to identify these
fallacies as several of them are blatant.So what are they?

1 His
overall
argument relies on 'begging the question'

In the first paragraph of his essay, de Quincey refers to
the Big Bang hypothesis as a ‘myth’ and consistently does so throughout the
essay.He does so without justification.
In fact he relies on this characterisation as his argument develops. So in
assuming his conclusion in his premises, he is indulging in the common logical
fallacy of begging the question – this can be a powerful rhetorical device but it
is unworthy of an intellectual argument that is designed to persuade through
force of evidence and logic.

2 His
overall
argument fails because it relies on a false premise

His overall argument can be simply summarised as
follows:

Myths
are stories about origins and other aspects of existence that are unsupported by
evidence and that are arbitrary, that are believed in spite of, rather
because of, empirical data and the evidence of our senses, and that are
protected by an ‘anointed class’ who have a personal interest in their
continuing influence in the society

The Big
Bang hypothesis is a story about origins that is unsupported by the evidence and
that is believed in spite of that evidence, that is protected by scientists
who have a personal interest in its continued dominance and who set out to
destroy the reputations of those who put forward viable
alternatives.

Therefore,
the Big Bang hypothesis is a myth

This
argument is fallacious because it relies on a false second premise.For as we have seen, the fact is
that the observational data overwhelmingly support the Big Bang hypothesis in
its concordance form, the alternatives actually have far greater problems in
explaining what we observe and have been rejected for that reason, and that
those conclusions are based on vast quantities of data and research conducted
over the last ten to fifteen years (and not because cosmologists have a vested interest in supporting the concordance
model).

Myths
are stories that are arbitrary – stories that a community finds comforting, or in
some way life-enhancing. De Quincey
himself promotes a myth about consciousness permeating all levels of matter
(panpsychism) that I assume he finds comforting.It is a myth because it is an arbitrary and untestable idea that is
unsupported by any kind of evidence.But
neither the Big Bang hypothesis, nor, in fact, its scientific rivals, are
arbitrary or untestable.They can be and
have been tested, they make predictions and they fall firmly within the
framework of modern science.Scientific
hypotheses have enormously higher value in explaining the natural world than do
the arbitrary stories of myth and superstition. By all measures, as we have seen
above, the Big Bang hypothesis is well supported by observation and data and
cannot logically be characterised as a myth.

This is
not to claim, of course, absolute truth for the Big Bang hypothesis (or indeed
for any scientific hypothesis).It might
well be that at some time in the future, as more data about the Universe becomes
available, a different and better hypothesis will emerge that better fits
the data.This is the way science
works.The fact is that the concordance
model is the best hypothesis that we have at the moment.It is a model in which we are gaining more
confidence as we accumulate data and as we are able to cross check predictions
in a number of different ways.It is
not a myth.

3 He argues for rejection of Big Bang for philosophical
reasons

His
argument can be summarised as follows:

Philosophical
and scientific considerations carry equal weight as we seek to determine the
cosmological origins of the natural universe

Even if
the Big Bang is supported by observational data and is a satisfactory scientific
hypothesis, it is
philosophically unsatisfactory because it predicts a universe finite in time
which robs our existence of ’meaning’

Therefore
we should reject Big Bang

The
logical fallacy here is that de Quincey makes an assumption or an assertion in
the first premise that is false. He assumes that philosophical and scientific considerations carry equal
weight as we seek to determine the cosmological origins of the natural
universe.But this is a false
assertion.Philosophy and science are
not equivalent ways of viewing the natural universe and they do not carry equal
weight when it comes to determining the way the universe works.Modern science has been
successful in unraveling the way the universe works.Philosophy, on the other hand, has
little or nothing of value to say about the natural universe and natural processes.Science is based on observations of the
external objective universe and results in clear and measurable increases in
knowledge.Philosophical
ideas,
in contrast, arise from inward contemplation and contribute little directly
to our knowledge of the natural
world.

If the
scientific evidence supports an idea that any person finds unsatisfactory or
distasteful from a philosophical point of view, history tells us that we should
back the science. For example,
Ptolemaic geo-centrism, based on a philosophical idea,
was challenged, ultimately successfully, by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler
using observations and the scientific method.Darwin successfully challenged the concept of immutability of the species
in the face of considerable philosophical opposition from those who found the
concept of common descent, particularly with regard to the origins of the human
species, unsatisfactory.Quantum
physics, especially in concepts such as the Uncertainty Principle, tunnelling,
entanglement and the superposition of states has had its fair share of
philosophical opposition.In all cases,
the science emerges triumphant, because it can be rationally and objectively
tested.

In the
same vein, some people object to the Big Bang hypothesis because it describes a
closed universe and an ultimate end in Big Crunch or heat death.Well, it now seems certain that the expansion
of the Universe is accelerating, that the expansion will continue to accelerate
and end in heat death or a Big Rip.That’s just the way it is, and all the
distaste and philosophical angst focused on this scenario will not change
the facts.Desiring that something
should be so, does not make it so. The philosophical objections to the common descent of man and chimpanzee have
evaporated in the light of overwhelming evidence.Similarly the philosophical objections to the
end-game of the Big Bang are entirely irrelevant when we are considering what the truth
is.Frankly, scientists should
ignore these philosophical considerations
And they do. Their job is to
determine the way the universe actually works, uninfluenced, so far as they can
be, by philosophical, religious or political
considerations.

Therefore
we can have no confidence in their existence, any more than we can in mythological gods

de
Quincey uses the example of gravitational lensing to illustrate this, writing:‘For
example, in 1919 Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) confirmed Einstein's prediction
that light, passing a massive body such as a star, would bend due to the
gravitational warping of spacetime. Of course, no-one actually saw the spacetime
warp. All that was seen was a light source which deviated from where it should
have been had the geometry of space followed Euclidean dimensions as Newton had
assumed. The “observation” derived its persuasiveness from rigorous mathematical
abstractions, not from direct empirical evidence'This
statement is misleading - observations of gravitational lensing do not
persuade because of mathematical abstractions but because of direct
observation of this effect.We can
conclude with as much certainty that light in transit from distant galaxies is
being affected by the gravitational field of closer masses, as we can conclude
that light is refracted by transparent lenses in the laboratory.What is
more, the effects we observe can be used to infer significant information about
the cosmos.

I am
going to treat this in some detail, as an illustration of how de Quincey's
lack of in-depth knowledge of science leads him to dismiss the relevance and
persuasive force that comes from observations of a phenomenon such as
gravitational lensing. He seems to be labouring under the bizarre
misapprehension that for something to be directly observed it must be seen like
a beach ball in front of us, emitting, absorbing or reflecting photons in the
visible.He rejects the notion that an
object observed by other physical effects can be said to be directly observed.Of course, he is wrong in this, but the most
absurd aspect of his statement about Eddington's observations is that he rejects the notion that an object can be directly observed by
refracting or bending the path of photons. So, in his
mind, emission,
absorption or reflection of photons constitutes direct observation, but
light bending does not.This is just
silly.Furthermore, he claims that
Eddington simply "observed" [his quotes] that the light source deviated from the position that it
would have occupied in a Euclidean space (actually forgetting the time element
introduced by Einstein between 1911 and 1916 in the full deflection prediction
of General Relativity) - of course Eddington did no such thing because there is
no way of telling where that would have been - what Eddington observed was a
change of position of stellar objects when the light from them passed close to the
sun compared with when it did not.(Eddington, by the way confirmed Einstein's full deflection prediction
of 1916 rather than the earlier half-deflection prediction of 1911)

The
observations of gravitational lensing are very detailed and include observations
of variations in deflection as a result of parallax as the earth orbits the sun,
multiple images of quasars, Einstein rings, arcs on the caustic of deflection,
distortions and convergences of the star-field (cosmic shear and cosmic
magnification) and different delays in the light curves of multiple images and
different intensities in those images. Wambsganss presents an excellent overview
of gravitational lensing
(61).The literature is extensive with
more than 2,400 papers available in one bibliography (62). Here is some more
detail on the different effects of gravitational lensing:

Strong lensing occurs when light
passes near the core of a very massive object and includes:

multiple images; the light passing
near a massive object can reach us by more than one path producing multiple
images of the same source.This was
first observed in 1979 (63).Strong
lensing effects are used to probe the cosmological constant (predicting a value
close to the current measurements from an entirely route) (64), measure the
Hubble constant (65), and the mass distribution of galaxies in the cosmos (66).There are detailed catalogues of multiple
images of quasars (67) (72) and an archive of multiple image photographs (68)
available on-line

Einstein rings and arcs, caused by
strong gravitational lensing of distant objects. An explanation and illustrative
animation is available on-line (71). The first Einstein ring was discovered in
1987 (69) (70) . There have been at least twelve subsequent rings
discovered.

different delays in the light curves
of different images of the same object

Weak lensing occurs when the light
propagates through space, being influenced more or less by masses in the vicinity
of its path, resulting in shear (distortion)
and convergence (magnification) of the source on a statistical basis, but not
resulting in multiple images
(73). The
effect is often too weak for us to reach any conclusion on the basis of observation
of a single star. Data is more reliably derived by observation of statistical
phenomena. Weak lensing is particularly
useful to probe the dark matter constituent of the cosmos (74), (75).

Micro-lensing occurs when the effect
is too small to observe geometric distortion, but where intensity anomalies
occur owing to the gravitational effect causing focusing and dispersion of the
light from the source. Paczynski was the first researcher to explore
microlensing in 1986 (76) and a decade later, he and Bohdan published an
excellent review. (77). Microlensing of sources in the Local Group (the
Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the galactic halo) by closer
objects is being used to find and identify Massive Compact Halo Objects
(MACHOs) which are a significant source of dark matter. Several major
experiments are underway and report on the web, including the OGLE experiment
(78) (79) and the MACHO experiment (80). OGLE maintains a real time
database of current transit events (79). Some more general information
is available on the web (81) and in Mao's excellent review article (82).

So de
Quincey's odd statement that'the “observation” derived its persuasiveness from rigorous mathematical
abstractions, not from direct empirical evidence'can
be seen to be absurd in the light of all this vast quantity of observational
data. I have reviewed gravitational lensing in some detail, because de Quincey
used that as his main example, presumably because he felt that it best made
his case. We could do the same for black holes, dark matter and other
phenomena that he would like to suggest are 'indirect' and thus poor
evidence for the standard cosmological view.

5
He argues that scientists are modern shamans

He writes:

'First of all, even the mere knowledge of the existence of such entities as dark
matter, black holes, and cosmic strings, requires an initiation into the
"priesthood” of mathematical physics. Modern physicists and cosmologists must
undergo years of disciplined training in how to look (through
electron-microscopes and astronomical telescopes), and how to manipulate
mathematical hieroglyphics. This is not so very different from the years of
training and discipline that ancient shamans and priests had to endure to learn
to “see” supernatural events, and to manipulate ritualistic symbols and
hieroglyphics.'

His
argument goes thus:

Scientists
must undergo years of training in their subject and their knowledge in not
accessible to the general public

Shamans
must undergo years of training and their knowledge is not accessible to the
general public

Therefore
scientists and shamans occupy the same functional and sociological niche
in their respective societies

And,
since laymen cannot understand the conclusions of modern science it has no
value in explaining origins

De
Quincey indulges in several fallacies. He starts off with
a weak analogy comparing shamans and scientists. In fact, scientists and shamans differ vastly in
far
more respects than they are similar. Scientists undergo years of education
because science is a complex and difficult subject that repays study and hard
work. There is a considerable amount to learn before one can begin to build
on the foundation. The shaman undergoes years of study because - well,
who knows why - it is certainly not to acquire anything that we would recognise
as 'knowledge'. Science is rational, acultural, international, and
practised by those of all religions and beliefs. It is self-correcting and focuses
on external observation, objectivity and predictability . Shamanism
is arbitrary, culturally specific, local, and, for a particular set
of beliefs, practised only by those
of a single religious persuasion. There is no mechanism for correction,
and it focuses on internal interpretation, subjectivity and fortune telling. Science
illuminates. Shamanism obfuscates. Science has an unsurpassed
track record in revealing knowledge about the natural universe. Shamanism has failed
to reveal any knowledge about the natural universe, being based on superstition
and myth. Its beliefs are often bizarre and wrong-headed particularly
in its failed attempts to explain natural phenomena.

In
almost every important respect, science and shamanism are dissimilar.

But
we are not done. Having woven a weak analogy, he proceeds to serve
up the fallacy of 'poisoning the well'. In order to persuade his readers
not to consider the views of scientists in support of the concordance, he
tries to equate the methods of science with that of shamans. He draws a parallel
between the ritualistic symbols and hieroglyphics of the priestly caste and
what he calls mathematical hieroglyphics. Anyone who doubts the value and veracity
of superstition and is suspicious of the assumed authority of priests is invited
to apply analogous views to modern cosmology. He uses the undoubted
fact that thinking people should rightly be wary of bell, book and candle, of
magic
and superstition, to tar the science of cosmology with the same brush. But again
his analogy is too strained to be valid. The symbols and hieroglyphs of
the priests are designed to mystify, confuse and overawe, and deliberately to
cloud understanding. Their meaning, such as it is, is kept under a
veil of great secrecy and communicated only to the initiated. Mathematical
symbols, on the other hand (not hieroglyphs as de Quincey would have it - his
attitude to mathematics is rather telling) form part of the language of mathematics.
Since physics is a mathematical science, its principles can best be communicated
in mathematical expressions. The language of mathematics, unlike shamanistic
symbolism, is open to anyone who is willing to make the effort to learn it.
It is a universal language that is used to communicate. I have previously
encountered
the view in the mouths of the ignorant
and the lazy that the mathematical treatment of scientific
concepts is designed to confuse the laity - but I have never before this
occasion
heard it expressed by someone who is an academic and
a university teacher.

Next,
he produces a non-sequitur: 'And to the extent that modern cosmology is remote from laypeople, it ceases to
have any felt meaning...The current cosmological story based on the hypothesis of the Big Bang may fall
short both as science and as story—failing to provide coherent understanding
compatible with observation or to provide satisfactory meaning'.(We have already dealt with the erroneous challenge to Big Bang as science,
so we'll set that aside). In other words, he claims that the Big
Bang cosmology has no value as an explanation of origins because it is not understood
by laypeople. This is a non sequitur - the conclusion doesn't follow the antecedents. Scientific
explanations do not rely on the understanding of non-scientists for their
veracity, meaning and value. Contemporary discoveries and hypotheses now and
in the past have often failed to be understood by the vast majority of people.
Scientific knowledge has often been misinterpreted or partly understood
(de Quincey's essay itself is shot through with just such partial understanding
of the science). None of this affects the veracity, value or meaning of
scientific ideas in the slightest. It does not matter, with regard to
these considerations, whether a scientific concept is understood by the
layperson or not. The value and meaning of a scientific idea is not determined
by whether de Quincey or his students or his tailor or his washerwoman can understand
it. It is not even determined by whether a scientist trained in another
field can understand it - it is determined solely by whether it matches the
evidence and makes good predictions. His non-sequitur does even
support his main thesis - that the Big Bang cosmology in particular is flawed - because all
modern cosmological hypotheses, including the ones he enthusiastically
promotes are the same in this respect. If we were to accept his illogic,
we would have to reject all scientific cosmological hypotheses,
which, of course, is nonsense. Fortunately, there is no need to
contemplate that.

What
is science for?

Some
commentators appear to believe that it is the purpose of science to provide a story
which uplifts them They are disturbed by the idea that the universe might one day
become a place where life, intelligence and consciousness cannot survive. They
seem to need to believe in an eternal universe (perhaps even one which becomes
steadily more complex and organised). They berate scientific thinking
for putting forward a 'mechanistic' perspective on natural processes, on the
stochastic character of cosmological and biological evolution. They
go so far as to imply that we should give credence to cosmological concepts
to the extent that they satisfy the need for 'felt meaning'.

This
is not the purpose of science. It is not the object of science to tell
comforting stories, to create hypotheses which fit some pre-conceived empirically
empty idea that 'there is something other than an "accidental
collocation of atoms" at work in the universe'. Scientists strive to uncover
how the universe and things in it work. In doing so, they should leave
their philosophical, religious, social and political prejudices at the door,
and they should let the evidence take them where it will. They should be unmoved
by the protestation of critics and observers who object to their conclusions
on anything other than scientific grounds. History is strewn with examples of
failed challenges to scientific thought based on peripheral arguments. Science has the overwhelming advantage of being externally
and objectively verifiable. Non-scientific fads come and go, but the truth
about natural laws and processes survives.

The
time when the universe is unable to sustain complexity and consciousness is
likely to be billions of years (perhaps thousands of billions of years) in
the future. It seems inconceivable that one's spirit could be damaged
by contemplating such a remote event when one's personal death is a mere handful
of years away - the briefest instant in cosmological time. We humans
have, for at least 50,000 years, had to come to terms with our own death.
Adults face the prospect with more or less equanimity, more or less fear. Similarly,
adults are going to have to come to terms with the ultimate (but very distant)
demise of the universe as a place fit for intelligence, and it seems to me a
far easier task than facing my own death.

Conclusion

So we
have seen that, far from being a modern myth, the Big Bang is a good scientific
hypothesis, well supported by data. Whether it survives and how it develops
will depend on findings from the vast number of astronomical observations and surveys,
satellites and balloons, telescopes and bolometers. But in any case, it
has none of the characteristics of myth. Dr de Quincey has produced an
essay that is fundamentally flawed, scientifically, factually and logically.

In his
conclusion de Quincey suggests:
'Anyone interested in pursuing further either aspect of the
controversy—scientific or philosophical—should go to the sources mentioned at
the beginning of this essay. For the scientific argument, read Lerner’s The Big
Bang Never Happened, and for the philosophical context, read Mendoza’s The
Acentric Labyrinth. Each book presents a superb historical context for its
respective subject matter.'

The
Lerner book, at least, is quirky and badly flawed. Anyone who is really
interested in understanding the science needs to read much more widely
than that. Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and Adams' and Laughlin's
'The Five Ages of the Universe' are good introductions to cosmology.
Also try this: 'The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, The Cosmological Constant, And
The Beauty Of The Cosmos', Mario Livio and Allan Sandage, John Wiley & Sons,
2000. On-line,
NASA has a good website here: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html
. Try, also, the Hubble Space Telescope website that has some marvellous photographs:
http://hubblesite.org/
.

Finally I refer the reader to the references
and resources below, which is a far richer, more recent and better researched set than
simply reading and being misled by
Eric Lerner's book.